From preparedness to patriotism was an easy step. The preparedness advocates had evoked the spirit of the founders of American democracy and worked upon the emotions of the people until it was generally understood that those who favored preparedness were patriots.
Plutocratic patriotism was accepted by the press, the pulpit, the college, and every other important channel of public information in the United States. Editors, ministers, professors and lawyers proclaimed it as though it were their own. Randolph Bourne, in a brilliant article (Seven Arts, July, 1917) reminds his readers of "the virtuous horror and stupefaction when they read the manifesto of their ninety-three German colleagues in defense of the war. To the American academic mind of 1914 defense of war was inconceivable. From Bernhardi it recoiled as from a blasphemy, little dreaming that two years later would find it creating its own cleanly reasons for imposing military service on the country and for talking of the rough rude currents of health and regeneration that war would send through the American body politic. They would have thought any one mad who talked of shipping American men by the hundreds of thousands—conscripts—to die on the fields of France...."
The American plutocracy was magnified, deified, and consecrated to the task of making the world safe for democracy. Exploiters had turned saviors and were conducting a campaign to raise $100,000,000 for the Red Cross.[46] The "malefactors of great wealth," the predatory business forces, the special privileged few who had exploited the American people for generations, became the prophets and the crusaders, the keepers of the ark of the covenant of American democracy.
Radicals who had always opposed war, ministers who had spent their lives preaching peace upon earth, scientists whose work had brought them into contact with the peoples of the whole world, public men who believed that the United States could do greater and better work for democracy by staying out of the war, were branded as traitors and were persecuted as zealously as though they had sided with Protestantism in Catholic Spain under the Inquisition.
By a clever move, the plutocrats, wrapped in the flag and proclaiming a crusade to inaugurate democracy in Germany, rallied to their support the professional classes of the United States and millions of the common people.
6. Business in Control
After the declaration of war, the mobilization and direction of the economic war work of the government was placed in the hands of the Council of National Defense, an organized group of the leading business men. The Council consisted of six members of the President's Cabinet, assisted by an Advisory Commission and numerous sub-committees. The "Advisory Commission" of the Council (the real working body) contained four business men, an educator, a labor leader and a medical man. ("The Council of National Defense" a bulletin issued by the Council under date of June 28, 1917.)
Each member of the Advisory Commission had a group of persons coöperating with him. The make-up of these various committees was significant. Among 706 persons listed in the original schedule of sub-committees, 404 were business men, 200 were professional men, 59 were labor men, 23 were public officials and 20 were miscellaneous. It was only in Mr. Gompers' group that labor had any representation, and even there, out of 138 persons only 59 were workers or officials of unions, while 34 were business men and 33 professional men, so that among Mr. Gompers' assistants the business and professional men combined considerably outnumbered the labor men.
The make-up of some of the sub-committees revealed the forces behind the Defense Council. Thus Mr. Willard's sub-committee on "Express" consisted of four vice-presidents, one from the American, one from the Wells-Fargo, one from the Southern and one from the Adams Express Company. His committee on "Locomotives" consisted of the Vice-President of the Porter Locomotive Company, the President of the American Locomotive Company, and the Chairman of the Lima Locomotive Corporation. Mr. Rosenwald's committee on "Shoe and Leather Industries" consisted of eight persons, all of them representing shoe or leather companies. His committee on "Woolen Manufactures" consisted of eight representatives of the woolen industry. The same business supremacy appeared in Mr. Baruch's committees. His committee on "Cement" consisted of the presidents of four of the leading cement companies, the vice-president of a fifth cement company, and a representative of the Bureau of Standards of Washington. His committee on "Copper" had the names of the presidents of the Anaconda Copper Company, the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company, the United Verde Copper Company and the Utah Copper Company. His committee on "Steel and Steel Products" consisted of Elbert H. Gary, Chairman of the United States Steel Corporation; Charles M. Schwab, of the Bethlehem Steel Company; A. C. Dinkey, Vice-President of the Midvale Steel Company; W. L. King, Vice-President of Jones & Loughlin Steel Company, and J. A. Burden, President of the Burden Steel Company. The four other members of the committee represented the Republic Iron and Steel Company, the Lackawanna Steel Company, the American Iron and Steel Institute and the Picklands, Mather Co., of Cleveland. Perhaps the most astounding of all the committees was that on "Oil." The chairman was the President of the Standard Oil Company, and the secretary of the committee gives his address as "26 Broadway," the address of the Standard Oil Company. The other nine members of the committee were oil men from various parts of the country. What thinking American would have suggested, three years before, that the Standard Oil Company would be officially directing a part of the work of the Federal Government?
Comment is superfluous. Every great industrial enterprise of the United States had secured representation on the committees of business men that were responsible for the direction of the economic side of war making.